Broderick: Remembering Lakeview wrestling coach Hepler

He was in the wrestling room on the very first day his school had a team.

He was on the sidelines during one of the most notable matches in city history.

And he helped build what is now one of the strongest and most consistent wrestling programs in the area.

As we take a moment to remember Jerry Hepler on his passing, it is important to point out all of what he should be remembered for.

Hepler, a longtime Lakeview wrestling coach, died earlier this month in Arizona at the age of 75. Friends and family gathered for funeral services Friday.

He hadn’t lived full-time in the Battle Creek area for almost two decades, so Hepler’s connection to the local sports scene on a day-to-day basis had lessened. But when news of his death made the rounds, his overall impact in local wrestling circles was as strong as ever.

“When I first heard it about it, we were at the state meet and word got around quickly that he had died. Here we are at the biggest meet of the year and people are taking time to come up to us to give their well wishes and make sure our school knew he would be missed,” current Lakeview wrestling coach Chris Dunham said. “It was really cool to see how much of an impact this guy had on the state as a whole. You could tell he was really special to a lot of people.”

Hepler was an assistant coach at Lakeview for the program’s first season in 1961.

He quickly became the head coach and remained in that job until 1993, minus a few years when he went to another school, and a few other years for a short-term early retirement.

During that time he became the all-time winningest wrestling coach at the school with 249 wins, which is about half of the total amount of wins the school has overall.

“He was a great wrestling coach. A great guy to work with, a perfectionist,” said Gary Beard, who was athletic director at Lakeview during a big chunk of the time Hepler was a coach. “He was here during the golden years of wrestling here in the city. He was a driving force for the success of the wrestling program here at Lakeview. He helped build it.

“We loved him and we are so sorry to hear about his passing.”

Longtime wrestling fans from this area know what Beard is talking about when he says “the golden years.”

Hepler was a key part of what is probably the most memorable wrestling match in the history of Battle Creek.

In the early 1970s, Harper Creek, which was ranked No. 1 in Class B, hosted a dual with Lakeview, which was ranked No. 2 in Class A.

There was an estimated 2,700 people at Harper Creek for the match and it was said there were close to 300 more people left outside, not able to get in the gym.

Current Harper Creek coach Dave Studer was on the other side of that epic dual and recalls it vividly.

“He was there for that match, coaching on the other side. People came from all over. The fire marshal had to come out and turned people away wanting to get in,” Studer said. “There were people sitting on the floor and we had to clear a path just to let the wrestlers get to the mat.

“They won that one. Then the next year, we wrestled at their place and there was 2,000 more people, and we won.”

Hepler’s touch extended beyond Battle Creek, however.

“He not only did a lot for wrestling in the city here, but also across the state,” Studer said. “Back then, we were talking about how it would be nice to have a team state champion in wrestling. Back then, they picked a champ based on results in the individual state meet and one year Hillsdale was state runner-up just because it had a state champ and a runner-up – two kids. But that was enough points.

“So Jerry and myself wrote the original proposal to create a team championship. Basically, from that, that’s what we have today with the state team championships here in Battle Creek. He was a great coach and a great promoter of our sport.”

It has been 20-plus years since Hepler last coached Lakeview in wrestling. And many of those years since were spent in his retirement home in Arizona.

But upon hearing the news of his death, friends and former Lakeview wrestlers gathered locally last week to remember their coach at Miller’s Time Out and to tell stories. It was just the continuation of what was still going on while he was alive at tournaments throughout the state, decades after he last was on the mat.

“I never was able to meet Coach Hepler, but I sure heard a lot about him. It didn’t matter where I was at, but because I was from Lakeview, coaches and officials across the state always pulled me aside and had great things to stay about him,” Dunham said. “He was an integral part of not only getting the wrestling program at Lakeview going, but making it the institution and program it is.

“He did a lot of the legwork in establishing the program and helped get it to where it is at today.”

The Lakeview program is something Hepler helped build, the historic matches in the city of Battle Creek are what the former Spartan was a part of, but his legacy is in the impact he had as a coach on peers across the state and the wrestlers he took the mat with for three decades.